Hey guys,Many years ago I converted all our home videos from VHS to DVD. We made about 6 copies for various groups of family members, and they're spread over 7 or so DVD Videos (with menus/chapters, etc). The original transfers were far too huge at the time to keep, but I kept the Nero "NRG" image files.. until the other day, when I accidentally wiped the hard-disk they were stored on.

Since then I've been trying to get the data off the disks - I have 2 copies of each disk with me.

- I tried 2 Mac's, one running Mac OS X and another running Windows, but they kept tripping over during file transfers, and I had to restart and hold the click button to eject the CD.

- So I'm now trying my blu ray drive at home. It seems as though in both copies of each disk I have, the SAME files or parts of files are corrupt. But if I cancel the transfer at the point in which it can't read from the disk anymore, I can still open the corrupt file and watch some of the footage.

- I used ISOBuster to try and recover the data. It quickly found corrupt sectors and I opted to 'skip' all the corrupt sectors - however it still reaches a point where the entire system halts and goes *extremely* slowly, with ISOBuster appearing to not respond and stuck on the same percentage.

- The weird thing is, I found that if I let the computer eventually put itself to sleep, then wake it up again, it kicks ISOBuster back into action and it manages to copy a significant portion of the file before tripping over again. Overall however, it's a tediously slow process.

I'm just wondering if anybody has had a similar experience and can shed any light on what might be happening, how I might be able to recover the data, and why the same parts of 2 copies of a disk are corrupt..

You could also try one of the CD recovery tools that are out there. They can work when a normal copy doesn't work because they will keep retrying (sometimes for a set number of times) and can work past bad spots. One is CD Recovery Toolbox but I know there are others out there. I believe a number are even free so there's little risk in giving them a try.

@chuckula - Good idea, but no I don't.. I don't think.@just brew it! - What's 'marginal'?@ludi - No, I tried a BRD-ROM drive, not a player; sorry I wasn't clear. I can't recall setting any copy protection flags, that would suck. Although I recall that the DVDs had trouble simply playing in DVD playing software.@nanoflower - I tried CD Recovery Toolbox, it would stop responding at a corrupt spot and taking the disk out and putting it back in would on occasion edge it a % or 2 forward. I'm using ISOBuster now which seems very smart and it's not doing much better.

Quality of CD/DVD media (and drives) varies a lot. Consequently, some discs will just be more difficult to read than others and/or may only be readable in certain drives. Really crappy media, or media that is stored in a harsh (hot and/or damp) environment will also deteriorate over time, and may simply become unreadable after a period of months or years.

RhysAndrews wrote:@ludi - No, I tried a BRD-ROM drive, not a player; sorry I wasn't clear. I can't recall setting any copy protection flags, that would suck. Although I recall that the DVDs had trouble simply playing in DVD playing software.

Yeah, that would probably be either a lousy encode (if this has been a long-term problem with these discs) or a degraded source media.

If you're just concerned about the video itself, have you tried ripping them with Handbrake? If the discs are corrupt it will probably enter a near-endless read cycle at the same point, and eventually spit out a glitchy encode, but it's worth a shot.

Thank you all for your suggestions.I got too stressed with it all and gave up for a while. Came back to it tonight, picking up all the pieces to work out where I got to.I put in a DVD and simply watched it tonight, and it got all the way through one 'episode' without a hitch.

I started playing the next one and it soon stopped.I tried another disk, and it stopped early on - put it in my Xbox instead, and it played past that point for quite a while before eventually falling over.

Mostly, this is a good sign - the data is THERE, but it just can't all be read at once and all the software options I've tried just can't handle that.I like the suggestion to try new DVD drives until I find something capable of running this probably cheap and/or degraded media.

Won't be of much help but a lot of problems on CD and DVD burns in the old days happened when you burned at the maximum speed for the burning drive.

That drive usually had no issues reading back the data but other drives did. The solution was to reduce the burn speed.A possible option for you may be to get that old drive out if you still have it and try reading with it.

What you need is software that will skip over bad sectors, search for the next batch of 'good' data, and come back to the bad later.

Iso puzzle will do this, and I've had good luck with it: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/IsoPuzzleIt will skip bad sectors to keep the read speed high, and come back later and tray again on successive 'passes' of the disk.

Just to make sure, the discs are spotless I assume. I have had good luck with washing dirty DVDs to clean them up. Just wash with warm water and dish soap. Take _clean_ fingers and wipe the disc radially, from the center to the outside. Then dry it off, pat dry the surfaces with toilet paper or kleenex.